THE KASTELLAN HEIR.

THE TOWER.

The capital tower rose six hundred feet into the night, a spear of black glass with a crown of white light.

Ronan stepped out of the car at five minutes to midnight. The driver, an ordinary man in an ordinary suit, said nothing. Wind whipped the hem of Ronan's coat. Above him, sixty stories of darkened windows stared down like cold, blind eyes.

He walked toward the doors.

The lobby was empty. No security desk. No cleaners. Just a vast marble floor gleaming like black ice and a single elevator standing open at the far end, its light spilling out like a mouth.

"Welcome, Mr. Kastellan."

The voice came from behind a pillar. A tall man in a gray suit stepped into the light, his face expressionless, his hands empty.

"Crane," said Ronan.

"You're on time."

"I generally am."

"Arms up."

Ronan lifted his arms. Crane patted him down with the brisk efficiency of a man who had done it ten thousand times: coat, pockets, waist, ankles. He found the flask and unscrewed it, sniffing.

"Brandy."

"Alfred's idea."

Crane handed it back. His pale, weathered eyes rested on Ronan for a long moment. "You look like her."

"Who?"

"Your mother." There was no cruelty in it. It was said the way a man remarks on the weather. "The same jaw. The same walk. I was only ever near her twice. She never once looked at me the way you're looking at me now."

Ronan said nothing. His pulse pounded in his ears.

He paused, his gaze drifting to the black glass above them, the city below.

"She smiled when she was afraid," he said. "Did you know that? The night of the fire, she walked into the nursery with the baby in her arms and a lamp in the other hand and she was smiling. I remember thinking, that is a woman who cannot be stopped." He looked back at Ronan. "I was wrong about that. But I remember thinking it."

"You were there?"

"I was on the road. I wasn't in the nursery. That was a different man." Crane's mouth flattened. "I'm not a saint, Kastellan. I only mean to say that some of us remember."

It was the strangest thing Ronan had ever heard a killer say. He filed it away, cold and precise, for later.

Ronan said nothing. He thought of the man on the phone in the vault, of the letter in his father's slanting hand, and of the strangeness of standing so close to the person who had cut the brakes and being asked to remember a smile.

"Get in," Crane said.

The elevator rose in silence. Numbers flashed past: twenty, thirty, forty. In the polished brass, Ronan caught his own reflection, a young man in a dark coat with his father's eyes.

You are not going to kill him, he told himself. Not tonight. Tonight, you are only going to stand there.

At the sixtieth floor, the doors slid open.

The penthouse was enormous and unfurnished, a cavern of raw concrete and floor-to-ceiling glass, the city sprawled beneath it like spilled jewels. The lights had been turned off. In the middle of the floor, a single work lamp burned, and its pool of light held a steel chair.

Sienna sat in it.

Her wrists were bound behind her. Her hair hung in matted strands. One eye had swollen almost shut, and a dried line of blood ran from her hairline to her jaw. But when her head lifted and she saw him, her good eye blazed.

"You fool," she rasped. "I told you not to come."

"You say that every time."

"And every time you ignore me!"

"It's a habit."

She laughed, cracked and painful, and her whole face crumpled with something that wasn't quite a sob. Ronan started forward, but Crane's hand landed on his shoulder.

"Not yet."

"How thoughtful," said a warm, cultured voice. "Both of you, so predictable."

Aldric Neville stepped out of the darkness.

He wore a black overcoat and carried an ivory-handled cane, though Ronan had never seen him limp. In the harsh light of the lamp, his white beard glowed, and his green eyes shone with a pleasure that was almost tender. He looked like a man who had come to a birthday party.

"Ronan, my boy," he said. "I confess, I wasn't sure you'd come."

"You left me no choice."

"I always leave people no choice. It is my one true talent." He gestured with the cane. "Please, sit. There's a chair for you. I thought we might talk."

"I'd rather stand."

"How like Patrick." Aldric sighed. "Very well."

He walked slowly around the chair, cane tapping on the concrete. Ronan turned with him, never letting his eyes leave the old man's face.

"I'd like to begin with an apology," Aldric said.

"An apology."

"For the way I disposed of Emeric. It was crude. He's an old man, and he loved your family, and I could have been more gentle." He shook his head. "But I did not want him meddling. He always was clever."

"He isn't dead."

"So I'm told. A pity." He turned back. "You've brought the shares?"

Ronan lifted a slim black briefcase. "Every one. Signed. Notarized. Yours, if you release her."

"Show me."

Ronan set the briefcase on the concrete floor and flipped the latches. The lid rose. Inside, arranged in neat rows, lay a stack of documents bound in green ribbon. Aldric bent, lifted the top page, and read it with a slow, greedy smile.

"Yes," he breathed. "Yes."

Sienna's eyes met Ronan's across the room. She saw something in his face, calm, steady, weirdly untroubled, and her brow creased.

"There's just one small matter," Aldric said, straightening. "A little unfinished business. I'm afraid I've allowed someone to join us."

He nodded toward the shadows.

A door at the far end of the floor opened. A man walked in slowly, his shoes scuffing on concrete. He was thin and unshaven, his shirt collar limp and stained, his hair greasy. His hands were shoved in the pockets of a shabby jacket. His eyes were red-rimmed and bright, and they fixed on Ronan with a hatred so pure it was almost unrecognizable.

"Hello, Ronan," said Preston Halvane.

Ronan stared.

"Aldric was kind enough to give me a job," Preston said. His voice was a rasp. "Since I have no other. Since my firm's gone. My house is gone. My fiancée's gone. My name's on every gossip site in the country." He took a stumbling step forward. "You took everything, you bastard."

"You took mine first."

"I gave you a job!"

"You gave me a boss who slept with my wife."

"Boys, boys," Aldric murmured, waving a hand. "Preston, put on a show for our guest."

Preston drew his hand from his pocket. It held a pistol. It shook violently, the barrel wavering, but it was pointed straight at Sienna's head.

"On your knees, Kastellan," Preston whispered, tears streaming down his face, his lip trembling. "Or I swear to God, I'll do it."

The concrete room went still.

Ronan looked at the gun. He looked at the shaking hand. He looked at the man who had stood in a garden in a rented suit and laughed while an heir was mocked, and he felt nothing at all except a strange, hollow pity.

Slowly, deliberately, he knelt.

Aldric smiled.

"Now," he said softly, "the signature."

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